JD Health Set Up USleep Center to Provide Sleep Health Management

by Hui Zhang

JD Health unveiled a sleep center-USleep Center on Mar. 19 in partnership with the Chinese Sleep Research Society, and SUMIAN,a leading company in China focusing on the research and treatment of insomnia and depression. The sleep center is established to solve the issue of imbalanced distribution of medical resources for insomnia and to provide professional medical education to both doctors and consumers.

The sleep center will bring together experts in the sleep area from China’s 3A hospitals and will offer online consultation services with the help of therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition to online consultation, JD Health will also offer omnichannel solutions, including online observation and offline services, to bring convenience for patients. At the same time, the sleep center will also provide videos and infographics, and livestreaming events on sleep health management knowledge.

“The sleep center will focus on establishing the most authoritative platform in China to provide sleep-related information. Meanwhile, it will gather sleep experts across China and offer trainings to related doctors to improve their professional skills, and will also take advantage of 5G, Iot, and AI among other technologies to build an intelligent sleep center,” said Jianbo Xiao, general manager of JD Health’s Internet Hospital.

According to the 2020 China Sleep Index Report, more than 300 million Chinese people are being plagued by insomnia, and the average length of sleep for Chinese people has dropped from 8.8 hours in 2013 to 6.5 hours in 2020. According to a survey released by the China Sleep Research Association, the incidence of insomnia among adults in China is as high as 38.2%. Behind the insomnia, there are often major hidden diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cerebrovascular diseases and tumors.

“A healthy life starts with good sleep, and JD Health is eager to work with partners to bring integrated online and offline health services to those suffering from sleep problems and contribute to improving public health, ” said Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Health.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

In-depth Report: A Young Scientist Embracing Broader Future of AI

by Ling Cao

As a technology and service enterprise with supply chain at its core, JD is combining technology innovation with the real economy. This is what Dr. Jinfeng Yi, head of Machine Learning at JD Technology and his team strive to achieve. Yi, a 33-year-old from Chengdu, Sichuan province, was named one of MIT Technology Review’s “Innovators under 35 in China” for 2020. He was also the only individual recipient of JD’s “CEO Special Award” in 2020 selected from over 360,000 employees.

Jinfeng Yi at Bear Mountain in State of New York, USA

 

Smart supply chain and a fully automated C2M system

At JD, Yi is committed to constructing a more intelligent, collaborative, and effective supply chain, and has led several significant innovations along the way.

One of them is the C2M (Consumer-to-Manufacturer), also known as the C2B (Consumer-to-Business) model. The C2M model enables customers’ preferences and demands to be a determining factor for what companies should produce and sell, thus evolving supply chains from a traditional enterprise-driven process into a more effective customer-driven process.

C2M isn’t new, but a critical problem remains unsolved, which is how enterprises can effectively pick truly valuable information from a massive amount of customers. Besides, these customers usually lack the channels and the motivation to tell enterprises what they think, making the problem even more challenging.

To address the problem, Yi led his team to build the first fully automated and smart C2M system in industry, which takes advantage of AI technologies and anonymous data from more than 400 million of JD’s annual active customers. The proposed system is able to predict common and tailored customer needs and automatically design top-selling products in various market segments.

Yi shared, “Compared with traditional labor-intensive designs, this new system can make optimal choices for each product attribute to achieve the highest possible sales volume and satisfaction rate, and largely shorten R&D and production cycles.”

Note that a traditional C2M model based on human experience can also guide manufacturers on optimizing a small number of product attributes based on consumption trends. However, it is hard to do with products with a large number of attributes. One example is a big appliance such as a refrigerator, which has over 100 attributes, ranging from color, capacity, compressor, featured functions and many more. Since each attribute has multiple selections, a high number of attributes leads to a mass amount of potential combinations that would be difficult to objectively assess. To address this problem, the proposed system leverages advanced AI technologies to provide the optimal choice for each attribute, ultimately finding the most favored solution from customer data.

In addition, the system can help predict market performance such as sales and rates of positive and negative comments for the product, and monitor the whole lifecycle of an item, making the decision-making process much easier.

Yi added, “We can put the new product into the system, and predict its performance in the simulation environment, in order to decide whether and how to make adjustments.”

The system is also interactive, rather than just outputting a traditional recommendation report. In the system, brands can adjust the suggested choices in real-time to suit real-world constraints. For example, the system may suggest using an inverter compressor, but as this suggestion would require a huge investment to build new infrastructure on the existing production line, the brand can change it to fixed frequency compressor to reduce costs. In the cases when an adjustment has been made, the new prediction can be viewed through the system almost instantly.

After nearly one year of self-developing the system from scratch, it was put into trial operations ahead of JD’s 618 Grand promotion in 2020. Using the system, JD and the brand Gree developed a new refrigerator within just two months to be sold during the promotion. This was the first product to be created for a brand via the system.

Some of the suggested functions for the new product including adding dry and wet separation functions to store different fruits and vegetables, as well as an antibacterial deodorization function which uses ion technology, plus an automatic ice-making dispenser and frequency conversion for energy saving. The system helped Gree shorten the design and production cycle of large appliances by more than 80%, saving costs while guaranteeing the same level of quality and high customer satisfaction. During 618, the product was the best-seller in terms of sales volume of 71 new multi-door refrigerators on JD.

GREE’s C2M refrigerator

In addition to Gree’s case, the system has already helped several other brands to produce new products, such as a new electric toothbrush for domestic brand Roaman. It helped the brand design four products that were all sold well on JD. New functions on the Roaman products include a high-performance magnetic levitation sonic motor, smart brush head replacement reminder and ultra-long battery life. “Going forward, we will open these capabilities to more partners, promoting business development via technology.” said Yi.

Roaman’s electric toothbrush

Given its tremendous innovations and practical values, this system has gained the Innovation Award of Management Science, which is China’s only national-level award in management science.

 

Optimize the smart dialog system

Yi has obtained a PhD in AI at Michigan State University, under the supervision of Profs. Rong Jin and Anil. K. Jain. Prior to joining JD.com, Yi worked as a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, which serves as the headquarters of IBM Research – one of the largest industrial research organizations in the world. The systematic learning and the working experience in the industry’s pioneer facilities have made clear to Yi one thing: technology can be used to make the world better.

Yi talks at a JD lunch event at the top AI conference IJCAI (International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence) in Stockholm, Sweden in 2018

Holding true to this long-term goal, Yi decided to come back to China and join JD, as he believes in JD’s reputation of authenticity, and was attracted to the company’s energetic atmosphere. Furthermore, his background in supply chain programs when he was at IBM was also a perfect match. Led by Yi, his team aims to conduct fundamental and applied research in machine learning and trustworthy AI, and build full-stack AI solutions supporting JD’s businesses in retail, finance, supply chain, and cloud computing.

To stay highly sensitive to the frontlines of the business, Yi often listens to customers’ feedback, and tries to improve products and services accordingly. He even talks with people like couriers, taxi drivers and barbers on what their pain points are at work, and thinks about what kind of smart services can help them address these issues.

Yi shared, “Another valuable thing we have done is to help optimize the smart dialog systems for customer service. ‘Customer first’ is one of JD’s core values, so the online dialog system is crucial to us.”

Yi’s team has worked on improving efficiency and accuracy of the system, introducing AI-driven query prediction and customer service allocation mechanisms. Based on the customer’s profile and historical shopping analysis, Yi’s team built a system that can automatically find out the reason for a customer query and the level of urgency, in order to help them connect with the right customer service, similar to a hospital guide. This system significantly increases the problem resolution and user satisfaction rates by 32.1% and 34.4% respectively, and reducing CES (Customer Effort Score) from 12.2% to 3.2%. Yi said, “In this case, technology can largely reduce the labor intensity of our customer service employees and increase user satisfaction, especially during peak periods.”

 

Trustworthy AI

Apart from his remarkable achievements in supply chains and other smart systems, Yi has also made key contributions to the concept of “Trustworthy AI,” especially in the field of adversarial machine learning.

Dr. Bowen Zhou, IEEE Fellow and the chairman of JD Technology Committee once commented, “In addition to Dr. Yi’s groundbreaking contributions to supply chains, he is also an extraordinary researcher who has made substantial progress in advancing the frontiers of AI. He has published over 50 papers in prestigious international conferences and journals such as NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, ACL, and ICCV. Notably, he is one of the pioneers in studying the adversarial machine learning problems. He proposed a series of classical algorithms, including ZOO, EAD, Seq2Sick, and AutoZOOM, and has significantly contributed to understanding the root causes behind the existence of adversarial examples and improving the AI model robustness.”

Prof. Anil K. Jain, who is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a member of The World Academy of Science (TWAS) also commented: “Over the past decade, Dr. Yi has been devoted to designing more secure and reliable AI models, and along the way, has created significant research and application value in many fields. Most algorithms proposed by Dr. Yi were backed by rigorous theoretical guarantees, ensuring that critical errors can be avoided even in the worst-case scenario.” This verifies that Yi attaches great importance to model reliability when conducting AI research.

Yi also believes that technology will be a force for good in society. “In my opinion, the future of the world is not about the competition between AI and humans; it is about who is good at using AI. AI can work as an assistant to help people solve many issues and improve their work efficiency.” During his work at JD, he has also contributed to making several anti-epidemic smart products in a short time via AI, and put them into the market application free of charge, including a widely-used daily necessity supply platform.

Yi is passionate when talking about technology. He sees his job as a life-long career; it is like climbing Qomolangma. He is always energetic, and always looks around to ensure he is taking the right path to the top.

“I’m still exploring more through AI and machine learning, especially on creating an effective, inclusive, and safe smart supply chain. JD’s fruitful real applications are fertile soil to maximize the value of technology, which will gradually make our contribution to digital transformation of the real economy,” said Yi.

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

Ahead of JD’s “Sleep Festival,” New Report Finds Gen Z is Seeking Perfect Sleep Conditions

by Kelly Dawson

As the stresses of career and life wear on China’s younger generation, sleep has become an ever more elusive obsession, according to the new “Five Senses Sleep Consumption Report for Gen Z” released by JD Big Data Institute two days ahead of JD.com’s sixth sleep festival on March 19th, which  offers a wide range of sleep aide products, cooperating with renowned home brands including Sleemon, Suibao, Luolai and more.

Dubbed the “Panda Generation” for the dark circles under their eyes due to lack of sleep, 40% of young Chinese born after 1995 go to sleep after midnight in order to seize back their few free hours after work, according to the report—and when they are ready to sleep, they are far more likely than other generations to rely on sleep aides that engage the five senses of “vision, hearing, smell, warmth and touch,” according to the report.

For example, sales of sleep-assisting ambient lights and blackout curtains on JD among Gen Z shoppers have increased by 85% YOY, all designed to achieve the perfect controlled sleeping environment. Audio-based sleep aides are also popular, with sales of white noise sleeping machines and soundproof flooring up by 86% on JD among Gen Z shoppers in 2020. Next up: smell. Sales volume of sleep sprays and aromatherapy devices among students has grown by 1.9 times YOY.

Soaking one’s feet before bed was once seen as the habit of the older generation, but Gen Z is increasingly focused on warmth to aide sleep, purchasing pedicure kits, heated massage machines and more, with sales on JD among students growing by 2.7 times YOY.

While the previous items are all relatively small purchases, Gen Z is not afraid to spend big to ensure better sleep, leading us to the final “sense”: touch.  Sales of mattresses on JD among Gen Z has increased by 244% YOY, across a wider range of mattresses including latex mattresses, coconut palm mattresses and more, demonstrating that this generation believes in finding the perfect fit for their needs.

 

(kellydawson@jd.com)

Aptamil Stages Hot Sales on JD Super Brand Day

by Rachel Liu

During a Super Brand Day launched by German maternal and baby brand Aptamil on JD on Mar. 17, sales reached RMB 34 million yuan, over 10 times higher than sales on ordinary days.

As more customers born in 1990 to 1995 are becoming parents, they are looking for more freedom in raising children. JD and Aptamil have been focusing on the needs of Gen Z parents, not only by providing them the most suitable products, but also by supporting scientific parenting methods.

Liya Tong, popular Chinese actress and brand ambassador of Aptamil, joined a livestream show on JD Live on the Super Brand Day, promoting the brand’s high-end infant milk powder products. Views of the live show surpassed 500,000.

Liya Tong, popular Chinese actress and brand ambassador of Aptamil, joined a livestream show on JD Live on the Super Brand Day

“Through working with leading brands such as Aptamil, JD Worldwide is able to better meet customers’ demands on high-quality products,” said Yunpeng Wang, general manager of JD Worldwide. “The Super Brand Day is a new start of the cooperation between JD and Aptamil this year. We hope that we can work closely in the future to create more high-end and customized products.”

JD Worldwide, JD’s platform for imported products, is a long-time partner with Aptamil. During the past June 18 Grand Promotion, Aptamil was among the best-selling brands on JD Worldwide. During the past Singles Day, sales of Aptamil increased over 110% YOY in total on JD.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

JD’s Paul Yan: Future will See More Integration of Online and Offline Consumers

by Ella Kidron

“We can’t distinguish from online and offline users anymore because now it is a highly integrated experience.” Dr. Paul Yan, Vice President of JD.com, Chairman of JD Retail Technology Committee, and President of Technology and Data Center, shared his insights during an online roundtable discussion, “Innovation-X”, jointly hosted by UC Berkeley’s Hass School of Business and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) on Mar. 18.

Dr. Paul Yan

Dr. Paul Yan

Yan was joined by Baohong Sun, professor of marketing at CKGSB, Rui Ma, founder and host of Tech Buzz China, Michael ChenWang, founder at Cider and Joy Tang, CEO of Mai.

Baohong Sun, professor of marketing at CKGSB, Rui Ma, founder and host of Tech Buzz China, Michael ChenWang, founder at Cider and Joy Tang, CEO of Mai.

The phenomenon of blurred lines between online and offline retail will be even more pronounced in the future, according to Yan. “Online users like JD want to go offline, and offline users want to go online.”

He also emphasized the importance of logistics in ensuring a superior e-commerce experience. JD’s same- and next-day delivery promise, which can be achieved for 90% of first party orders, set the global standard for e-commerce delivery. “There is a lot of technical innovation and service required to put everything together”.

Yan added: “The innovation I’m seeing now is making things even faster.” This has enabled JD to achieve two-hour, one-hour and even as fast as 30-minute delivery. “We are narrowing the difference between online and offline. It’s a huge challenge, but we are making progress – even for bulky goods such as a big case of mineral water.

The integration of online and offline is not only limited to physical goods, but also services. Yan mentioned how Internet + Healthcare companies such as JD Health are a game changer, helping to resolve the issue of limited medical resources and improve the allocation of top notch doctors throughout the country.

According to Baohong Sun, professor of CKGSB, one of the key features of innovation in China is helping people find products, and helping long tail products find people. “Most innovation is very customer-centric.” Sun further articulated the concept of “frictionless” e-commerce, from the search process through the purchase, regardless of whether it happens online or offline. Another important aspect is “making every channel shop-able” – especially content channels such as short video platforms. “Only 20% of time is spent on selling hard content,” according to Joy Tang, while the remaining 80% is spent on soft content.

 

(ella@jd.com)

Photo Gallery: This Week at JD (Mar. 13 – Mar. 19)

JD will help nearly a hundred fresh produce markets in Shanghai go digital, starting in late this month.

JD will help nearly a hundred fresh produce markets in Shanghai go digital, starting in late this month. A pilot program was launched on Mar. 19. Using JD’s omnichannel fulfillment service, local residents will be able to access fresh produce online via JD and have their orders delivered in as fast as within one hour. This is the first time that an entire produce market in a city has been put on an e-commerce platform.

On the business plan meeting held on Mar. 19 between Dyson and JD.com

On the business plan meeting held on Mar. 19 between Dyson and JD.com, the British household appliance brand announced that JD had become its biggest sales channel globally (online and offline) in 2020. Rob Webster, President of Dyson Greater China awards JD as “No.1 Global Partner” on the event.

 

Rob Webster, President of Dyson Greater China awards JD as “No.1 Global Partner” on the event.

JD Logistics announced that it will provide 24-hour delivery for Anhui’s spring tea in 27 cities in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, plus Shanghai. The announcement was made at a business conference held on Mar. 17 in Anhui province, which is the home of Huangshan Maofeng (黄山毛峰), Lu’an Melon Seed (六安瓜片) and Keemun Black Tea (祁门红茶), all of which are among the top 10 popular Chinese teas.

 

JD Sports together with Onitsuka Tiger, a Japanese sports shoes brand, launched a street dance competition

JD Sports together with Onitsuka Tiger, a Japanese sports shoes brand, launched a street dance competition targeting college students in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Mar. 16. The purpose of the competition is to encourage students to actively participate in various exercises and help improve brand awareness of both JD Sports and Onitsuka Tiger.

 

JD Hosts 10th Plogging Event in Sanya

by Ella Kidron

On Saturday, Mar. 13, JD concluded its 10th “plogging” event. Held in Sanya, Hainan province. The event and its corresponding series are meant to increase awareness of environmental protection by engaging the local running community in rubbish collection. The series began in December 2020 in Guangzhou, and has since been rolled out to 10 cities in total, including Shenzhen, Nanning, Xiamen, and others.

JD host plogging event in Sanya

JD host plogging event in Sanya

Plogging, a combination of jogging and picking up litter, has become a popular pastime in recent years. JD added an educational element to the activity by working with the sanitation department of Hainan to organize a garbage sorting tutorial, using the plastic picked up during the event.

A representative from the marketing team of JD Logistics’ South China division involved in the planning of the event, explained that the activity is part of JD’s Green Stream Initiative for sustainability, and the desire to promote environmental protection, as well as a healthy lifestyle, combined with the popularity of plogging overseas, inspired the event. “We connected with running groups in advance to attract increased interest in the event,” explained the representative. Feedback was positive, and also proved to raise the overall awareness of JD’s Green Stream Initiative and broader commitment to sustainability, which is a high priority for JD.

As of March 2021, JD’s “green stream” reusable boxes and other environmental materials had been deployed in over 30 cities in China, and used a total of 200 million times. Furthermore, through slimming tape and other packaging, the company has reduced the use of over 65,000 tons of plastic. Furthermore, paperless operations within JD’s warehouses have saved a total of over 1.7 million tons of paper.

 

 

(ella@jd.com)

 

Posted in ESG

JD to Digitize Nearly a Hundred Fresh Produce Markets in Shanghai

by Ling Cao

JD will help nearly a hundred fresh produce markets in Shanghai go digital, starting in late this month. A pilot program will be launched today.

Using JD’s omnichannel fulfillment service, local residents will be able to access fresh produce online via JD and have their orders delivered in as fast as within one hour. This is the first time that an entire produce market in a city has been put on an e-commerce platform. The program is a partnership among JD Fresh, Shanghai Municipal Government and Beijing Rally Data Software.

In China, customers are used to buying fresh vegetables, fruits, meat and seafood at a fresh produce markets in the vicinity of where they live, emphasizing the importance of freshness and cost-effectiveness. In Shanghai, with a population of over 24 million, trips to the market are an integral part of local culture. These markets have faced operational challenges, in part due to COVID-19, as well as the rapid development of e-commerce and the fact that young urbanites lack time to visit in the morning, when produce is at its freshest.

JD has integrated its capabilities in omnichannel to help transform entire markets into digital operations. Each merchant may simply upload their inventory information to an online system and be connected with JD. When customers place orders online, JD coordinate to have products sent from certain merchants at the market nearest to the customers’ location and be delivered to doorsteps in just one hour, helping merchants increase their sales and better manage inventory turnover. JD will also standardize the management process of the markets, helping with procurement, display and sales, improving overall operational efficiency. JD will perform spot checks and hold merchants to strict quality standards as well.

In addition to ensure a better livelihood for local residents, the program can also help promote a wholesale model in markets for hot-selling products via JD’s big data, forming a long-term and sustainable business model.

Yun Hu, general manager of Shanghai branch of Beijing Rally Data Software shared, “By participating in the program, we can help those merchants who lack online experience to improve their sales channels, as well as benefit customers, achieving a win-win.”

Wei Ye, head of JD Fresh said, “Going forward, JD plans to copy the model and apply it in other cities, helping fresh produce markets make digital transformation, and ensuring a superior and convenient shopping experience for customers.”

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)